by Matt Larkin
“You see, in the darkness, my kind can see things you’d not imagine. But still, the depth and nature of your gift does not oft present among mortal or immortal. It is a boon, and any who control such a power might subtly sway the web, perhaps even subvert the will of the fatespinners. Harnessed properly, your insights might lead to the ascendency of Amsvartnir. To my ascendancy over all the heirs of Gugalanna.”
Odin forced the pain down. The urge to call on his pneuma to bury it became almost overwhelming, but he might need that energy to escape and could not waste it on mere comfort. “Where is Idunn?”
“Hmm. There’s something special about that one, isn’t there? But I think you are not really listening to me, mortal. Because there is something even more special about you. Your ability might prove too valuable to pass up. It might change the course of urd.”
“It doesn’t.”
“Because you don’t know how to use it. Perhaps the Norns gave you the power, but that does not mean it cannot be used against them, if we can do so without attracting their agents.”
Agents? The Norns had servants now? Why would they need servants?
Fjalar seemed to think those entities actually controlled urd … so why have servants? To enact the urd they had written? Or to enforce it if someone went astray?
“Oh,” the svartalf said, chortling. “Oh, now you ponder questions you had not thought to ask. Whence comes this gift, you wonder?” Fjalar paused directly in front of Odin and pressed his clawed finger between Odin’s brows, drawing another trickle of blood. “You thought yourself so mighty in the Mortal Realm. Even in the Astral Realm you dared cross. As if there were not stronger, darker things the farther out you travel from the realms you know. You have a gift, yes, but here, you are not the god you thought you were. If you are lucky, I shall keep you as my slave.”
Odin chuckled, though the motion pained him. “You call that lucky?”
Fjalar leaned in so close his smooth-shaven cheek brushed against Odin’s beard. “Even in your realm, you know of the Goddess of Night. The Elder Goddess of the Dark. Her power saturates this realm. And her hunger is unmatched. I do not jest when I tell you that, if you fail to prove useful to me, I shall earn some morsel of her favor by sending her your mighty soul. And she will feast until you are a wretched husk, unfit to even return to the Wheel of Life.”
The svartalf drew back so Odin could look in his almost pitch-black eyes. “Or serve me well, and I shall nurture the darkness in you, until you become as one of us. The choice is yours.”
With that, the prince seemed to meld into shadow and was gone.
16
Beyond the Penumbra lay the Astral Roil, where the Lethe stole memories and eldritch abominations lurked within a shifting landscape. While the Penumbra served as an echo of the Mortal Realm, the Roil was a nebulous darkness that lost the rules of reality as men understood them. Passing into the Roil seemed akin to moving deeper under the ocean, and Hermod could only surmise that here, time became yet more strained.
As with the Penumbra, light and color was sucked out, leaving a world of blacks and grays and midnight blue. Cold and dead.
It was like walking atop a sea of shadows, the waves half-frozen in abhorrent, twisted shapes with no respect for their own weight. The land seemed cast out of glimmering obsidian, half alive, angry. The longer Hermod walked here, the more he felt something pulling at the strands of his mind. A feeling akin to suffocating ever so slowly, drowning in despair so profound it could blot out the sun.
A living nightmare, the screams of men made manifest. Even sorcerers feared to tread here, in their astral trances. It reeked of death, of decay older than the world itself.
As far from the Mortal Realm as he had trod, Odin had told him, so very long ago, that the Spirit Realm lay beyond even the Roil, perceived at times, as crystal spheres hovering around the Astral Realm. Even Hermod’s mentor could not say with any certainty whether the Spirit Realm actually orbited the Astral, or whether, as some vaettir had implied, this was simply a frame of reference for non-physical directions.
Either way, mortals could not tread there into the Spirit Realm. Spirits could descend into the Astral—indeed, to influence the Mortal Realm they had to pass into the Penumbra—but Odin had never managed to find a way back to the spirit worlds.
Or so Hermod had believed. But Odin had done it, had reached the Spirit Realm. Svartalfheim, specifically. The king had taught him that nine worlds composed the Spirit Realm, though Odin had not known exactly what connected the worlds within the realm.
A whisper thrummed from the land around him, a faint wailing of the damned, lamenting their urd.
The sound made him duck down into a crouch, glancing back and forth and yet able to make out naught save the ever-present darkness. In the Penumbra, starlight saturated the sky, but here it dimmed. Never had Hermod dared to press so deep into the Roil.
A wind whipped over him, cold as winter and more chilling, as if the apple no longer protected him from the elements. The whispering had not abated, but Hermod could not linger here. He pressed on, careful of his footing, trying to move in silence. The hairs on his arms stood on end, and hardly just from the cold.
His heart had begun to pound so loudly something must surely hear him thus.
The ground sucked on his boots like tar, trying to mire him here, trying to draw him under and devour him, body and soul. Grunting, Hermod drew on his pneuma to give his legs strength and jerked his heels up, one by one. The ground slurped as he pulled free, and with each step. He had to keep moving, the longer he lingered, the deeper it seemed to suck him in.
He fled onward, until the surface solidified beneath him. Here, the land rose up in jagged spikes, like a briar patch of obsidian shards. One brushed his arm and tore through his mail, the gambeson beneath, and his flesh.
“Ahh.” Hermod hissed, prodding at the wound.
Thousands of such thorns barred his path, a twisting web of death ahead of him. He glanced back over his shoulder. The mire that had tried to devour him now seemed to rise, lurching toward him in slow undulations, a living bog.
Shit.
Didn’t leave him much choice, did it? Teeth grit, he edged his way past the thorns, raising his arms over his head and turning sideways to avoid them as much as possible. Still, they snared his mail, tore his flesh. All he could do was fight through the pain and keep moving.
That mire kept crawling closer, every time he looked back. Like it was …
“Oh, fuck me …” Hermod mumbled.
Eyes had opened within the mire. Hundreds of lidless eyes, darkly luminous, fixated upon him. His breath caught at the sight. Something primal within him refused to accept what he was seeing. An impossible existence that exuded utter wrongness.
Tendrils began to rise from that ooze, glimmering points of shadow that latched onto the briars and heaved the mass forward with ever greater speed. Squelching. Slurping.
Oozing toward him.
His heart froze in his chest for a bare instant.
Then he broke into a mad scramble, heedless of how many thorns tore into his thighs, his sides. The thorns seemed to siphon his blood, sucking down his pneuma in the process. They fed on him, and a profound enervation closed in upon him, trying to slow his steps.
The whole land seemed intent to claim him, deny his passage.
Hermod grit his teeth against the pain. Were he to falter, that mire would have him. It left him no choice save to push onward, gulping down breaths of air to fight against the rising fatigue and despair.
More squelching sounded behind him. Closer. So close he couldn’t stop himself from looking.
The living mire had oozed over the brambles, was closing in on him. Would be upon him in a few heartbeats.
The sound of rushing water rose up ahead.
Hermod broke through the briar patch and pitched forward onto his face, slapping against hard obsidian. Half whimpering in horror, he crawled forward, desperate to escape the d
evouring mass. A glance over his shoulder revealed no sign of the thing.
Where was it? Where the fuck was it?
Surely, it had not given up.
Panting, he struggled to his feet, slipped down to one knee, and rose again. Had to move.
Keep moving. Run!
Don’t let it catch him.
Hermod scrambled forward, more exhausted than he remembered feeling in ages. The sound of water grew louder, and he stumbled toward it. More than aught else he needed to lie down, drink a few sips of water, gain some sleep. So thirsty …
Wait. No. Couldn’t drink the water here.
He passed around a hill of swirling shadows and fell to his knees before a black river. The waters were wide, half a mile, he’d gauge, and in the distance … that looked like a city. The walls of a city, albeit one covered in chains.
Hermod wiped his brow, trembling. This had been mist-madness. He had dared to come to a place sorcerers feared to look? What hubris to think he could rescue Odin, when the king had passed into some reality beyond even this horrid landscape. Nor did Hermod have any way back. He could not pass across the Veil from within the Roil—he’d have to find his way back to the Penumbra for that.
A bridge connected the Penumbra to the Roil—the easiest way to pass between the two, so long as its guardian permitted it. Perhaps he could retrace his steps and return to the bridge.
Heimdall had warned him not to go. But the guardian always said that, and Hermod had come to the Roil before. Not this deep, though. Not into this … nightmare.
Trembling, he pressed his palms together, trying to steady himself. Odin had taught him to calm his mind, to dive into a meditative trance. Such lessons felt so far away here. Indeed, he could no longer remember his mentor’s exact words. Had he truly lost the memories, or had he merely pushed his body and mind beyond their limits?
No, no, no. He had to focus. Letting his mind wander availed him naught. This darkness would consume him if he lingered here, of that, he had no doubt.
A city across the river. What did that mean? He was fair certain that he remained in the Roil, so such a city must be a ghost city. A haven for the dead? Certainly no place for the living, and probably not the location where he could find a way to Svartalfheim. What of the river itself?
As he knelt on the banks, a shrouded figure drifted over the waters, guiding a raft using a pole that looked cut from the same obsidian as most of the landscape here.
What manner of entity forded this river? For an instant, Hermod allowed himself to shut his eyes, to steady his breath. Then he climbed to his feet and raised a hand to hail the raftsman. The shrouded figure guided his craft over to the bank and drove it up on shore, splashing black waters very close to where Hermod stood.
An inexplicable aversion to those waters had Hermod taking a step away. “I need to reach Svartalfheim. Does this river go there?”
“The river goes everywhere.” The creature’s voice was empty and hollow, like a whisper on the wind. “But there is a price for ferrying.”
Hermod nodded, almost afraid to ask. “What price?”
“The only currency here. Souls. I shall have a tenth of yours.”
A tenth of his soul. Hermod could scarcely guess what that meant. What would he lose if he made such a bargain? Would he feel the loss? Perhaps such questions held no meaning. He had lost more than that much when Sif had died. It had ripped a piece of him out and left him as empty as this creature seemed. Hermod had not come thus far only to balk at the ferryman’s price.
“So be it. I agree.”
The entity reached a hand out toward him. Mostly, his shroud covered the limb. But beneath that, Hermod caught a glimpse of flesh so pale and gaunt as to seem almost skeletal. All instinct demanded he retreat from the creature’s advancing palm. All decency revolted at the thought of this thing touching him. But he had lost so very much already. He could not turn back. Never.
That hand closed over his mouth, cold and clammy and monstrously strong. Claw-like fingers dug into his cheek and yanked him forward a step.
The cold grew deeper with each passing breath, until it seemed to burn. It seared his cheeks and he convulsed, though he couldn’t break free from the creature’s grasp. His mind filled with a flood of images. His childhood with his parents. Skating on a frozen lake. Living with his uncles. His father taking him away, to search for his missing mother. Losing them crossing the sea.
A thousand other thoughts bombarded him and evaporated like dew, stolen. It was more than memories, though. It was the imprint those memories had made upon his very being. The sum result of his life, sucked out of him, draining away, and along with it, bits and pieces of himself. He felt it, as his pneuma fled, part of it lost forever. Hermod thrashed in the implacable grip, not only from pain but from the awful, inevitable realization: he had surrendered a part of his own humanity, and willingly.
Despair had closed in around his heart ever since the death of his daughter, and he had thought himself half dead inside. But his soul was more than that, written and changed by all the myriad joys and sorrows across his long years. And he had let such things go, traded them for this.
Of a sudden, the hand opened, and he collapsed onto the riverbank, gasping, unable to get enough air down in his lungs. Exhaustion seized control of him, and he lay writhing. Desperately, he combed his mind trying to feel for what he’d lost. But it … it just wasn’t there anymore. Something had fled from him, something precious and irreplaceable, something he’d built over his entire life.
But he couldn’t say what. Thus, he couldn’t even mourn its passing.
A piece of his soul lost. A piece of his humanity gone forever. And he could not miss it.
All he could do was clutch onto an emptiness deep inside.
Hermod climbed to his feet, still breathing heavily, and looked to the shrouded figure. The ferryman backed away, allowing Hermod space to stand on the raft. Once he had settled himself, the ferryman shoved off the shore.
The current caught the raft immediately, swifter than Hermod had thought, and soon carried them beyond view of the chained city, around a bend, and into deeper shadows.
Hermod’s feet ached to the point he found himself compelled to sit on the raft, though he feared any disturbance might make the hateful black waters splash up on the craft. He’d couldn’t say how long the ferryman had steered them—hours, certainly.
Everywhere he looked, more of the writhing landscape unfolded. Rumbling clouds of utter blackness crackled blue lightning on one bank, a storm that he found himself unable to tear his gaze from. The winds from that tempest whipped the river, forcing Hermod to draw his knees up to his chest in an attempt to keep from getting splashed.
Never had Odin prepared him for aught like this. Even his mentor, so far traveled, could not know all the secrets of this realm.
And Hermod had already seen far more than he’d have wished to.
The river’s currents only increased as they sped on. The banks to either side had become shapeless, dark expanses, and the stars had somehow drawn closer. Ahead, a black fog had risen off the waters, a cloud of impenetrable darkness blocking the way.
“What is that?”
“Your destination.”
His heart had begun to hammer against his ribs. He eased up onto one knee and raised a hand to Dainsleif, though he knew it folly to think he might defend himself against a fog.
The closer they drew, the more immense that cloud seemed to grow, and whispers issued forth from it, a cacophony of mismatched sounds. Hermod gripped Dainsleif’s hilt so tight his knuckles ached. He grit his teeth, bracing for an impact.
The raft passed into the fog.
It wasn’t damp, as he’d expected. Rather, his ears popped and vertigo seized him, threatening to send him toppling over the side of the raft. The air felt too thick, like a film clinging to his skin. He dared not breathe in these vapors, but he couldn’t see a damn thing to tell how soon they’d pass through this clo
ud.
He held his breath until his chest hurt. Until his head felt apt to burst. Until he could not hold it a moment longer. Then he gasped, sucking down lungfuls of the thick cloud. It clung to his throat, too, so dense he felt he could choke on it.
Coughing and sputtering, he slipped, bracing himself on the raft. Or trying. Unable to see what lay before him, he overshot with one hand and then pitched forward, tumbling over the front of the raft. A merciless undertow seized him and yanked him through utterly black waters, twirling him this way and that.
Once again feeling apt to suffocate, Hermod furiously swam for the surface and finally broke through. He could see now, a sky full of stars, though no moon. The river’s swift current sent him shooting forward, and massive rocks lay ahead.
Shit!
He sucked down another lungful of air and dove back under, just managing to catch the undertow. It jerked him around the rocks—barely—but held him under too long, spilling him down a short fall. Spots began to swim before his eyes, and he flailed, unable to break free.
His foot caught on the edge of a rock, and slipped, but it was enough to get him out of the flow, and he burst to the surface once more, gasping. Ahead, the river broke around a tiny rock island. Hermod angled for this, catching himself on the island.
Panting, he pulled himself ashore and rolled onto his back.
By the fucking Tree! He couldn’t catch his breath. Couldn’t quite …
A long howl went up, shrill and nerve-rending, followed by another and another. A rumbling storm front billowed in, moving far too fast for any cloud.
“Oh, what now?” His limbs felt like he’d gotten them caught between a hammer and an anvil. His body was spent, his pneuma drained.
A flash of lightning and a crack of thunder. In the momentary brightness, he glimpsed a charge of thundering horses amid that storm cloud, each ridden by an armored, white-masked hunter. Abominable black hounds with glowing red eyes raced between the horses, baying and barking.